Monday, September 24, 2012

Romantic Rose

The Romantic Rose Stamp is a "vintage" Stampin' Up stamp, which is long, long retired. One of my fellow demonstrators was selling off some retired stamps, and I fell in love with it and had to have it. I love stamps that can be watercolored, and florals especially. Though my Mom's birthday is not for a while, I'm going to tuck this card away for her. She was a gardener and a florist, and she'll love it.

Once I took out one retired item from my stash, I figured it gave me license to use some others, LOL! The greeting, ribbon, and Pale Plum card stock are also retired. As I always say when I'm using retired products, it's easy enough to replicate this card using current Stampin' Up products. I think the lovely roses from the Elements of Style Stamp Set would be just as pretty and a great substitute.

What threw me into my stash of retired products was this lovely color combination from the ColorQ Challenge. I was even inspired to replicate the roses on the gorgeous Royal Albert china. All the other colors are current Stampin' Up colors, except the Pale Plum which I only had the tiniest scraps of. I can't believe I even saved them!

I needed a layout with a large area for my stamp, and the clean and simple Pals Paper Arts sketch was just perfect. As you can see, I rotated it 90 degrees to fit my image.

Isn't this rose gorgeous? I stamped it with Black Stazon Ink onto Watercolor Paper. Then, I simply used an Aqua Painter and ink pads to color it in. The image makes it easy to shade. Just color a little darker where the cross hatching is.